More than 100 people involved in TV and film production have publicly signed an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, demanding that the Cupertino firm puts greater effort into marketing Final Cut Pro as an application for professional filmmaking.
The open letter, published on Tuesday, began with praise for the software, calling it “the biggest leap forward in editing technology since the move to digital.”
But the document went on to declare it “incredible that some of us still can’t choose [Final Cut Pro] to do our work. Work that could easily include productions for your very own Apple TV+ service.”
The letter bemoaned that while Final Cut Pro was a “wonderful application” that was “liberating, efficient and fun to work with… unfortunately in professional film and TV, editors who use Final Cut Pro are a tiny minority.”
The signatories then proposed various measures to help remedy the situation. One of them was Apple publicly supporting and certifying the suppliers of the third-party products and services that the video editors said they used in order to integrate the software into “industry-standard workflows”.
It was also suggested in the letter that Apple make improved Pro Apps support widely available, and that the company could ensure Final Cut Pro can be purchased through existing industry suppliers, on the grounds that “this is essential for big productions to accept Final Cut Pro as legitimate.”
The letter concluded: “We hope you will encourage our industry to see Final Cut Pro as a professional choice for editors of future award-winning TV shows and movies, and for millions more editors all over the world.”
Final Cut Pro did receive updates from Apple earlier in April, with changes including users being able to quickly locate media that appears multiple times, and machine learning background noise reduction to improve the clarity of speech.
